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During the last decade, new research approaches to global migration have highlighted the multifaceted ways in which structural inequalities and subordination impinge upon the possibilities to substantive citizenship (Fraser 2009; Nordberg 2006; Olwig 2011; Tully 2000). By shifting the focus from migrants themselves to reciprocal processes of interaction, the complex macro–micro relationship between recognition, redistribution, representation and a sense of belonging becomes visible. Scholars, particularly drawing on governance perspectives, have effectively shown how the political-cultural framework morally constructs and disciplines migrants (Lippert & Pyykkönen 2012; Geiger & Pécoud 2013). The categories produced for the purposes of governance are ordered along intersectional social divisions such as gender, race, class and sexuality (Anthias 2013). Recognising the insights of such previous research, the specific aim of this special issue of the Nordic Journal of Migration Research is to bring to the forefront new, empirically grounded understandings of policies and practices of migrant citizenisation in the restructuring welfare state. The individual contributions have been produced in different scholarly contexts: social work, social policy, sociology, education and ethnic and migration studies. A multidisciplinary approach to citizenship proved particularly fruitful for grasping the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary citizenship. Accordingly, introducing the notion of citizenisation, we develop it from a top-down understanding (cf Tully 2005) to the interplay between migrants’ negotiations and acts of citizenship (Isin & Nielsen 2008) and the normative practices of (welfare) state incorporation played out in street-level encounters. We understand acts of citizenship as a broad category of engagements. The notion of the street-level was introduced by Michael Lipsky (1980) to identify the specific character of this type of institutional encounters between bureaucrats and service users. In this issue, we find that street-level encounters constitute sites of fundamental importance for citizenisation, referring simultaneously to formal institutional encounters in the Lipskyan sense, to semi-formal institutional encounters and to the myriad forms of everyday encounters with fellow members of society. In the Nordic welfare state contexts at the street-level, migrant citizenisation practices are typically featured by extensive interaction with the local welfare state: mainstream social and welfare services as well as specific integration plans, language training and citizenship training (Fernandes 2013; Hagelund 2010; Keskinen et al 2012). The neoliberalisation of what once were perceived as mature welfare states has not only implied a move towards a fragmented and increasingly marketised model of service provision, but also a redefinition of the social contract with a stronger emphasis on the duties and responsibilities of individual citizens (see also Carmel et al 2011; Schierup & Ålund 2011). Accordingly, there is a call for research that empirically examines the implications of the reconfigurations occurring at the nexus of state policies, street-level encounters and the individual. The special issue takes as its starting point the way migrants socially engage/disengage with the street-level welfare state. This analytic lens that has not previously been discussed in the literature vis-à-vis migrant citizenisation draws on the understanding that migrants lose the social status they had in the country of origin. In the country of destination, the category of being a migrant is often a stigmatised category, regardless of the individual background and reasons for migration. Hence, the common denominator for people who have migrated is the experience of renegotiating subjectivities and social status positions (Wrede & Nordberg, 2010). Thinking about migrancy as a social category (Wrede 2010, 12–14, Näre 2014) in this way, we follow the lead of Bryan S. Turner (1989) who developed Received 23 February 2015; Accepted 25 March 2015

Street-Level Engagements: <i>Migrated Families Encountering the Local Welfare State</i>